Working on a couple little video clips to post on the FB page and turns out adding music is more complicated than one might think. Facebook rejected the video due to copyright issues. After looking into it, it seems there is no way to legally add popular music to a homemade video other than contacting the artist, producer, etc... and gaining rights to the music. Yet there are numerous videos on FB, YouTube and even this site that have background music. What am I missing? (Besides technical savvy, culture, and smarts of course..... )

You aren't missing anything. Without the artists permission you are just hoping that the track you pick won't be flagged and your video (or audio) disabled.

Here are some resources I've found.

http://research.culturalequity.org/home-audio.jsp
http://www.mobygratis.com
http://incompetech.com/music/royalty-fr ... ctions.php
http://www.danosongs.com/
http://audionautix.com/
https://soundcloud.com/search?q=royalty%20free

https://www.google.com/webhp?sourceid=c ... ns%20music

This one isn't live yet, but is put together by some people I have utmost respect for: http://www.usemysongs.com/
One track from people involved with that site is: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9A2XADj8z9Y
Astute listeners will recognize it from some of my videos.

Taj, just host your video on a third party video host, not Facebook. Then share the link via Facebook or here or Twitter or wherever you want.

Try these guys: https://vid.me/

An alternative is to use music from the site http://www.freeplaymusic.com/ They offer free use of music from the site for non-commercial purposes. The artists get more exposure and there are no copyright issues. If you want to use the tunes available there for commercial purposes, the rates are reasonable. You can search for music by genre, by the "emotional feel" of the tune or by type of instruments you want featured. I've found the site very useful and the selection is UUGE (as Donald Trump would say). I even sent notes to some popular music groups I liked and asked about licensing one or more of their tunes for non-commercial purposes and never got a response. Since I have friends that are struggling to support themselves as artists, I tend to respect copyrights, even if there is no money involved for my use.

F-Facebook...